Let them rub you and knead you
and pinch you, coat you with cold cream or grease you with oil of
olives. Redden cheeks and lips, whiten hands and shoulders, polish
nails, pencil eyebrows, squeeze in the waist, pad out the hips--swallow,
at the last, that little tablet which you slip from the jewelled case at
your wrist. It is all in vain. You deceive no man nor woman. They look
into your eyes and smile, but behind the smile there is a shudder!
Nell and Susie Rushford, with the wind playing in their hair and kissing
their cheeks, that morning, were miracles of freshness; two divine
messages, two phantoms of delight, sent from the New World to the Old.
And one was dark, with tints of violet
In hair and eyes, and one was blond as she
Who rose--a second daybreak--from the sea,
Gold-tressed and azure-eyed.
Nell, the elder, was tall and fair, like her father, rather sedate, with
not quite the sparkle of Susie, two years her junior, the counterpart of
the little mother whom she had never seen. And both were erect and
bright-eyed as only American girls seem to know completely how to be;
visibly healthy, happy, and pure-minded. I should like to pause and look
at them a moment longer, for I have always been a little in love with
them myself; I should like to add to the verses of our own dear poet
certain lines of Wordsworth, of Burns, of Byron--but you, dear reader,
will recall them readily, especially if you belong, as I hope you do, to
the great and glorious fraternity of true lovers; if your heart burns
and your pulses leap at mention of a certain name, at sight of a dear
face--
There came a sudden hum of excitement from the crowd.
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